Beach Music (77 page)

Jordan’s first letters began to arrive soon after the ordeal of plebe week was over and classes began. Under the cover of taking notes for his American history class, he wrote long diatribes about the indignities he and the other freshmen were forced to endure under the ungoverned rule of young sadists. “I wrote my mother a letter and thanked her for sending me to this wonderful hellhole. I reminded her that this is the same school that produced that wonderful sport she married and that some of these guys were actually making me miss my father. I’ve got this first sergeant, named Bell, who has taken a particular dislike to yours truly because he thinks the expression on my face reflects a bad attitude. Bell has the IQ of a Tater Tot and has no idea how bad my attitude is nor how bad I plan for it to become. I came here because my old man hates the fact that I’m alive and going around claiming to be his natural-born son. This whole thing’s a bad idea. My roommate loves all this and his ambition’s to be a sniper in Vietnam. It’s like rooming with Heinrich Himmler. Ask Shyla and Ledare if they’ll put hickeys all over my neck when they see me. Oh, but I neglected to tell you about the rich intellectual life at the Citadel. They showed the freshmen a stag movie last night where a woman makes love to a donkey. Believe
me, both of us would’ve chosen the donkey. And my roommate, bless his fascist heart, is very proud of his ability to fart on command. He has shared this prized piece of information with his squad sergeant and he now farts loudly and happily whenever called upon to strut his stuff. If I thought about how much I miss all of you, I couldn’t last another fifteen minutes here. Can you drive down to see me on my first leave? Yours truly, in torture and pain, Jordan.”

When Jordan marched in his first dress parade, Shyla and I drove down on a Friday afternoon to take him to dinner at the Colony House. Before the upperclassmen let Jordan and his classmates leave the barracks, they conducted an impromptu sweat party where Jordan was required to perform over a hundred pushups before he could sign out at the main sally port.

When he came out to meet us, his head shaved, we saw that he had lost a great deal of weight.

“Why are you so skinny?” Shyla demanded to know.

“My first sergeant doesn’t believe that animals and plants should die just to let a dumbhead live,” Jordan said. “His mother taught him not to waste food and feeding a knob is, by definition, wasting food.”

“Is this school teaching you anything?” I asked. “What’re you majoring in?”

“Spit shine.”

“No, really,” Shyla said, laughing. “What’s your field of study?”

“Hand grenades. With a minor in flame throwers.”

We spent the night teasing and joking, but Jordan could not hide the deep sadness that provided both text and color for every story he told about life in the barracks. Another boy’s face was so disfigured by acne they forced him to wear a paper bag over his head at mess. A freshman from Waycross, Georgia, who had grown up poaching alligators in the black silences of the Okefenokee Swamp, had a nervous breakdown in physics class.

What was getting to Jordan was the suffering of others; long ago he had grown accustomed to his own suffering. The cruelty he faced from the upperclassmen seemed buoyant and lightweight compared to his father’s far more studied tyranny. Almost alone among the freshmen, Jordan found the meanspiritedness of boys almost
comical. What he did find disheartening was that the Citadel seemed to represent an institutional mimicry of his father’s dark spirit.

Before we even ordered, Jordan had eaten the whole loaf of freshly baked bread and a whole stick of butter that the waiter had brought with our menus. He also put four lumps of sugar into his iced tea and apologized profusely to his dinner companions.

“I’m hungry enough to eat the crotch out of a rag doll,” Jordan said.

“Jordan!” Shyla warned.

“Sorry, Shyla. I heard that at mess. No cadet can finish a sentence without using the word ‘fuck’ at least once.”

“I thought I liked Carolina,” I admitted, “until I saw your place. Now I know I’m ecstatic.”

“Jack’s having a little trouble adjusting,” Shyla said, “but the rest of us are in hog heaven. You ought to quit this dump and go to a real college.”

“I’d love to find an honorable way out,” Jordan said. “If I just quit, my father’d never pay my way to another college. The problem is that there’s no real honorable way out of the Citadel except with a diploma.”

“Think of something,” Shyla said. “Jack needs a friend. Who’d’ve thought the big fella would be lonely on a campus chock-full of ten thousand people?”

“Jack’s shy,” Jordan said. “It’ll take him a while to get his feet on the ground.”

A voice above us said, “Cadet Elliott.”

The three of us looked up to see a Citadel upperclassman standing above Jordan. Jordan immediately stood up at strict attention and entered into a semi-brace much to the consternation of the cadet.

“Not here, Elliott. At ease, mister. I’m eating dinner with my parents and I couldn’t help but notice you unfastened the zipper on your dress blouse when you sat down. That’s an upper-class privilege.”

“I wasn’t aware of that, sir.”

“Report to my room ten minutes before taps, smackhead,” the cadet whispered, then smiled as he looked down at Shyla. He was
about to introduce himself when I grabbed him hard by the ear and jerked his head down toward me.

“Hey, acne breath,” I said into the boy’s ear. “I’m a patient in the state mental hospital on Bull Street. I killed my mother by stabbing her in the eye with a butcher knife. I never have to want to come looking for you, but if my cousin Jordan ever tells me to …” I lifted a steak knife off the tablecloth.

“Let him alone, Jack,” Jordan said. “I’m very sorry, sir. My cousin doesn’t get out of the hospital very often.”

“I’m his nurse, Cadet,” Shyla said. “I hope he didn’t frighten you. We’ll have to increase his medication.”

I released the frightened sergeant who said, “Thanks, Elliott. Forget about reporting to me. Enjoy your evening.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jordan said. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to join us, sir?”

“My mother didn’t suffer,” I said. “She died instantly.”

As the cadet hurried back across the darkened room, Jordan said, giggling, “His name is Manson Summey and he’s the meanest son of a bitch in the corps. He eats knobs for breakfast and brags about how many he’s run out of the corps this year.”

“Let him run you out. Come to Carolina,” Shyla said. “We’ve got dormitories full of girls who’d just lap you up like cream. There’s liquor, parties galore, big band music …”

“Then why’s Jack so lonely?” Jordan asked, reaching across through the candlelit gloom and squeezing my wrist.

“Because he’s Jack,” Shyla said. “He thought we’d all grow up and you, me, Capers, Mike, Ledare, and him would all live in one great big house.”

“What’s wrong with that?” I said.

“Sounds like heaven to me,” Jordan said, inhaling deeply as his steak arrived from the kitchen.

“It’s impractical,” Shyla said. “It shows no imagination.”

“It shows good taste, Shyla,” I said. “I know who my friends are.”

It took Jordan Elliott another month of the plebe system before he decided he had a solution fantastic enough to get himself expelled from the Citadel, but in such a way that he could leave with
both his dignity intact and his father’s blessing. His father had believed that the Citadel would harden his son in those places that his mother had made soft in her husband’s absences. What the general demanded was that the school do what he failed to do—make Jordan unlike his mother in every way.

The plan Jordan devised required the help of his friends at the University of South Carolina and made clear that Jordan had already developed his natural gift for strategic planning. Clear vision was an old habit of his and the stress of the plebe system only strengthened his proficiency at making correct decisions on the spur of the moment.

Two weeks before the annual Citadel-Furman football game, ten Citadel cadets had taken a weekend leave and kidnapped the sleek Arabian horse that served as Furman’s mascot. The horse was a docile animal, beautifully proportioned and easily handled, but in the cadets’ haste to make off with the Furman paladin, the horse was accidentally blinded by two cadets far too drunk to be loading a strange horse properly. When the cadets realized how serious the injuries to the mascot really were, they did what they considered the humane thing and put the horse down with a single pistol shot to the brain. One cadet made an error of judgment by spray painting the word “Citadel” on the dead animal’s body.

Before this incident, Furman and the Citadel had been bitter rivals indeed. Afterward, the Citadel represented and embodied everything demonic and unspeakable in the modern world to this pretty, Baptist-governed college, which sat in the rolling hills outside of Greenville. The once placid and genteel student body of Furman rose up in sheer, barbaric fury when the news of the atrocity spread across campus. A photograph of the slain horse was on the front page of every newspaper in the state, and, fearing reprisals, the president of the Citadel, General Nugent, restricted all cadets to the campus until after the Furman game was over. Several Furman fraternities pledged to hang the Citadel bulldog at half-mast on the state capitol flagpole in honor of the slain paladin.

Jordan Elliott’s first sergeant, Manson Summey, was visiting his girlfriend at Furman on the Sunday morning when the dead paladin’s picture appeared in the
Greenville Morning News
. After kissing
his girl good-bye at the entrance to her dormitory, fifty Furman boys, including half the football team, met Manson at his car.

When they returned Manson Summey to the Citadel campus two days later, they had shaved Manson’s head and genitalia, dressed him in girl’s panties, and covered him with chicken shit and chicken feathers they had gathered from a local farm in Greenville. They painted the word “Furman” on six buildings on the Citadel campus, including the chapel. The cadets vowed revenge when Manson was found chained and badly beaten up, lying in the middle of the parade ground. But General Nugent, after a conference call with the governor and the president of Furman, restricted all of his cadets to their rooms and stationed guards around the campus to prevent further incursions by Furman students. Tensions between the schools heated up to dangerous levels, and both football teams vowed to win the game that would take place in Charleston the following Saturday. Great male energy, undirected and captious, was loose in the air and the Citadel campus felt like a small warlike principality that was under siege. The word “Furman” had become an expletive among the aroused cadets for whom the beating and humiliation of Manson Summey had erased all memory of the death of Furman’s horse.

Then freshman Jordan Elliott went to his company commander, Pinner Worrell, with a brilliant plan that combined military strategy with a biblical sensibility for vengeance. The plan was simple but cunning, and Cadet Captain Worrell agreed to sponsor it and even participate in it if Jordan could convince three non-Citadel people to drive the getaway cars. Jordan assured his commander that he had lined up the three drivers perfect for an operation that combined a love of fast driving and a passion for taking risks.

“Can they keep their mouths shut, Elliott?” Cadet Worrell asked.

“I’d trust them with my life, sir,” Cadet Elliott assured him.

“But you’re a knob, Elliott. The lowest form of waste product. A wet dream. A used Kotex. An ass-wipe. There will mostly be upperclassmen on this project. The crème de la crème. Veritable gods, Elliott, veritable gods.”

“Sir, I’d trust the lives of veritable gods with these three friends. Even a used Kotex like me.”

“I’ll be responsible for all military and strategic aspects of this top-secret mission, dumbhead. Next year, I’ll be in Vietnam killing gooks, plundering villages, pacifying the countryside, and generally kicking quite a bit of Asian ass. You, Elliott, will be responsible for transportation only. You’re only a knobule, a sperm cell of a true Citadel man. I’ll teach you everything you need to know about the subtleties of military genius.”

“Sir, leave the transportation up to me.”

On the Wednesday night before the Furman game, fifteen cadets from G Company dressed in fatigues gathered to hear last-minute instructions from Pinner Worrell. For the fifth time, he walked them through each step of their commando raid on the campus of Furman University. Each squad was required to paint at least three buildings before hustling to the rendezvous point for the rapid trip back to Charleston before reveille sounded. Timing was essential in this mission, he repeated over and over. The fifteen cadets synchronized their watches as Pinner went through their assignments once more. They had already loaded paint cans, brushes, wire cutters, and liquor into the three cars now parked and waiting in Hampton Park just off the Citadel campus. When the bugles echoed through the barracks at ten-thirty, the fifteen of them were standing at a side gate. They sprinted out the gate together and as they passed a junior sergeant they shouted “All in,” running past him into the darkness, and raced for the railroad tracks behind the military science building. The cadets had to be back at the Citadel for morning reveille at six-fifteen. The city of Greenville lay two hundred and ten miles away.

With our three cars running, Capers, Mike, and I checked our watches, revved our engines, and waited for the cadets to charge through the azalea bushes that lined the railroad tracks. None of us had hesitated when Jordan had called and asked for help. For the sake of friendship, each of us loved the idea of racing our cars at full throttle from one end of the state to the other.

I revved my engine as Jordan climbed into the car beside me and his company commander, Pinner Worrell, rode shotgun. Three seniors leapt into the backseat yelling, “Go, go, go.” Capers’ Pontiac GTO took off first, burning rubber, followed by Mike’s ’57 red Chevrolet, which Mike kept in perfect condition. My car was more
pedestrian, a gray ’59 Chevrolet with odd tail fins that made it look grandmotherly. But it was my first car and I loved it precisely because of its homeliness and lack of style. It was not the swiftest of the three cars, but once it hit the highway it could cruise at high speeds with the best of them.